Lean Roundup #100 – September, 2017

A selection of highlighted blog posts from Lean bloggers from the month of September, 2017.  You can also view the previous monthly Lean Roundups here.

What is Lean? - Paul Akers discusses how everything you do is a process and every process can be improved.

Why is Business Transformation so Hard? Lessons from the ‘Back Pain Industry’ – Pascal Dennis shares several lessons for Lean/CI and business transformation from the back pain industry.

Lean Leadership: A Direction . . . Not a Destination – Gregg Stocker says Lean is about shifting the way people throughout the organization think and approach work and if leaders expect it to happen without transforming themselves, the probability of sustaining improvements is pretty much zero.

Make Sure Failure = Learning – Mark Rosenthal says it is difficult for a lean process to survive in a culture that expects everything to run perfectly and doesn’t have robust mechanisms to turn problems into improvements.

Tools or Culture? – Bruce Hamilton explains why Lean tools are essential as means for improvement; Lean culture is essential to enable us to see beyond the status quo.

Creating a Problem-Solving Army - Dan Littlefield says by implementing a Lean Management System, you are, in effect, creating an army of problem solvers who improve processes as a part of their daily work.

How Toyota Gets Organizations Started with TPS – Mark Graban discusses how TSSC shares TPS with outside organizations as it celebrates its 25th anniversary from it’s VP Jamie Bonini.

Monuments to the Lean Journey – Kevin Meyer shares a personal monument that reminds he of the fragility of improvement, the importance of focus, and how critical it is to go beyond the gemba to see the value of your products from the eyes of your customer.

A Spymaster’s Guide to Lean Thinking – Jon Miller summarizes of a few similarities between good spy craft and good business leadership that come with lean thinking.

There’s Value in Simple, Visual and Manual Systems – Steve Kane explains that despite the ease of data management systems there is value in a simple, visual, and manual system of information.

Ask Art: “Do lean conversions actually go smoothly, like in the books?” – Art Byrne discusses from experience issues and solutions during Lean conversions.

Note: This is the 100th Lean Round-up on A Lean Journey Blog over about an 8 year period.